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THE BLIND MIRROR by Christopher Pike begins as a traditional whodunit. David Lennon returns to California after spending two months in New York City on a business trip. The twenty-eight year old artist has been presented with a wonderful opportunity: the chance to create the cover art for a potential new vampire novel that is expected to be a blockbuster bestseller.
But David is also recovering from a broken heart. On the night before he left for the Big Apple, his lover dumped him in a cold and heartless way. While he drives home from LAX, he decides to return to the beach where they had their final rendezvous. As he comes upon the ashes of the small fire he and Sienna made love next to … he is shocked to find … "[t]he decomposed body of a woman … half buried in the sand."
David reports his grizzly find to the police, and as they begin to ask questions, he "felt as if he were a suspect. I didn't have anything to do with her. I just found her is all." The Sheriff tells him, "Often the first person who finds the murder victim is the one who murdered them."
And as David's plight unfolds, he becomes drawn into the vampire novel he brought home from New York, whose cover he is assigned to create. Pike chose to write THE BLIND MIRROR as a "frame story" … a novel within a novel. Usually when an author chooses this device, it serves as a parallel "gloss" to the central or main tale. Unfortunately, here, the interior vampire novel is too obscure to help inform the reader about what is happening in the main frame.
Both stories feel rushed, the events contrived, plot devices clumsy and the major characters are not fleshed out. The vampire story is too weird for readers to connect it to David's plight and Mr. Pike's novel falls apart. "The center does not hold" and readers are forced to suspend believability beyond their ken. Add to this the predictable turns and twists in both plots, and the entire structure implodes.
Nevertheless, Christopher Pike is a veteran novelist who has written more than fifty books. THE BLIND MIRROR, despite its flaws, does manage to evoke the eeriness of how the juxtaposition of everyday, mundane life can appear like a frantic hologram when positioned against a surreal set of circumstances. And Pike does make his point, albeit with overkill, to expose "the evil that men do."
As a beach read THE BLIND MIRROR will keep you entertained to a point, but readers can only hope that in his next endeavor, Mr. Pike reigns in his imagination and exercises more control over his plot. In that sense his fans certainly have something to look forward to.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
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